


Nerve Endings

by junkster



Series: Numbered Days [4]
Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Alex is a Hacker, Alternate Universe - No Girlfriends/No Wives, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Rhett/Link, Mike is a Spy, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:51:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21749344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkster/pseuds/junkster
Summary: For the first time in his career, Mike feels as though he might not be able to handle what’s being thrown at him. He's been tortured before, sure, but never like this.
Relationships: Mike Criscimagna/Alex Punch
Series: Numbered Days [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559131
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Nerve Endings

**Author's Note:**

> Set in serpentkinglink's Spy 'verse - thanks as always for letting me in! This is set before 'Shamelessly So Unafraid', but it's still probably better to start with that one.
> 
> Mike/Alex will never die, in my mind. **Never**.

  
  
  


For the first time in his career, Mike feels as though he might not be able to handle what’s being thrown at him. And it’s not because he’s been punched in the gut so many times he thinks they might’ve ruptured something. It’s not even because they waterboarded him, causing him to throw up cold water all over himself and them to strip him right down to his boxers. And it's _cold_. God it's cold. 

It _might_ be something to do with them giving him an intramuscular shot of MDMA before stringing him up, just to heighten every goddamn awful sensation from thereon in. Mike's no angel, he took Molly a few times in his youth, but the injection's worked so much faster and the enhanced sensory perception is definitely _not_ a good thing when you're being tortured. He feels sick to his stomach and cold to the bone, the muscles in his arms cramping sporadically.

Arms burning furiously at the shoulder from the strain of holding his body up, he looks down at where his bare toes barely brush the ground and he closes his eyes, wrapping his fingers tightly around the rope that’s dangling him from the rafters. 

He thinks of Alex, his best friend and best boy and plainly the best thing that’s ever happened in his miserable life, and the urge to cry is almost too much. He thinks of smiling eyes and gentle hands and laughter that leaves him breathless and his heart aches for the time they won’t have together. 

He wants to hate the woman that’s busily sliding a long, sharp needle through the flesh of his arm, right through his tattoo, but all he feels is that sudden, nauseating pain that makes his nerve endings burn, and a hollow, resigned sadness.

“You’re admirably calm, still,” she says, her voice coming to him as though from under water, distant and muffled. She walks around him like she’s judging a race horse. “Considering you look like death.”

Mike watches her as she comes around into his periphery again, her flat, black boots crunching gravel underfoot. She’s tall, forty-ish, pretty in a nondescript sort of way. He doesn’t know her name; doesn’t even recognise her from the files he’d studied before the mission. 

She meets his gaze with a hint of a smirk, reaching out to brush her curled fingers along his jaw. His stomach roils and he shifts his eyes back to front and centre, staring at the door across the way.

“You’re not new to this,” she says, a statement. “I appreciate them sending me a pro to work on for a change. The last guy only lasted a day. He's buried out in the field, actually. We were gonna feed him to the pigs, but then I thought why not let him fertilise my 'taters instead.” 

Mike’s jaw twitches as he gets a little heart palpitation, the sensation uncomfortably unnerving in his chest. “I don’t have the information you want,” he says for the sixth time, keeping his voice quiet and sedate even as the desire to thrash and yank at his bindings tries to take control of him. Still a little survival instinct intact, then.

“Of course you don’t,” she says smoothly. “You said that already.”

It’s a first for Mike, torture with needles. He’s been counting and, although he's started to lose track on the last couple, he’s pretty sure she’s holding up the twentieth right now. The fact that they're in a barn on the outskirts of the compound and she's picking these needles up with _bare hands_ off the top of an old barrel hasn't escaped him, either. When Morgan had told them they were going in to infiltrate a high-tech lab hidden on a working farm in the middle of California, Mike had been concerned. It's one thing working in the clean, easy environment of a high-rise skyscraper in the city, but it's a whole other kettle of fish to work with the heat of the sun and the dust, the animals and the machinery. And the huge, vast space. And, as it turned out, the insane fuckers who worked there, weird half-farmer, half-mad-scientist hybrids, doing despicable tests on animals and humans alike. Apparently incapable of any kind of empathy.

He steels himself for the next sharp prick and then the searing pain of cold metal sliding through the flesh of his hip. It’s an odd sensation, a sudden, shocking pain that slowly ebbs away to a burning heat, each one joining up to the next so his whole torso is alight with agony. The instinctive desire to try and escape it for the last half an hour has left his wrists bleeding too, the rough and wiry rope rubbing right through his skin every time he pulls. 

He knows help is on the way. Knows it for sure because they'd made the usual plan with Morgan that if they didn't check in every sixty minutes then reinforcements would be sent in, and since he and Alex had both had their smart watches and phones taken as soon as they were captured, that sixty minutes had to be just about to pass. Still. they're in the middle of nowhere, it's dark, and a heck of a lot can happen to a guy in sixty-plus minutes.

He can't stop the small sound of pain this time as she slides a needle right through the top of his left foot, the sensation of her other hand wrapping, _coiling_ around his ankle somehow worse than anything else.

  
  
  
*****  
  


Mike wakes up on the floor of his cage. And cage is the right word for it. They’ve got one each, side by side, like dog crates but with vertical bars only and custom made to accommodate a human being. Just about, anyway. Lying on his side, he listens to the silence for a long moment before turning his neck slowly. Alex is on his knees in the cage next door, looking at him and feeling as though the world’s come crashing down around his head, his eyes full of tears. It's been ten minutes since Mike was brought back. Ten long minutes of unconsciousness. 

"Mike?" he tries quietly, his voice wavering with fear. "Talk to me..."

“Hey, it’s okay,” Mike says automatically, an exhausted rasp. “I’m okay.” 

“No, dude, you’re _not_,” Alex says softly. “God, Mike, they really fucked you up this time...”

Mike shifts against the metal floor of his cage and reaches out, dangling his left hand through the bars. Alex reaches through and takes it in both of his, holding on tightly.

“I’m scared, dude.” 

Mike swallows. He looks like he's trying not to be sick, his skin pale and sweaty. “Me too, man,” he says softly. 

"Help's coming, though, right?" Alex says, squeezing Mike's fingers. "It's gotta be, by now."

Mike doesn't answer. He moves his head to press his cheek against a fresh patch of the floor, seeking out the cold as though his skin's feverish. 

"Should I do something about the needles, man?" Alex tries again. The exhaustion and resignation emanating from every inch of Mike's body is terrifying. "I don't know what to _do_."

“I think you need to leave them," Mike mumbles against the floor. "Don't touch them.”

“Why not? I could reach through the bars.”

"I think there might be something on them." Mike hesitates, closing his eyes as he shivers and goosebumps stand up along his arms, then he adds more quietly: “It hurts more than I think it should.” 

Fear clutches at Alex's heart. "Like poison or something?”

"Mmm," Mike hums, non-committal and absent. "I don't know. Maybe 's'just the molly."

Alex blinks. "What?"

"Molly," Mike echoes, a mumble, and then he's drifting back into that unconscious state and his sweaty hand goes limp in Alex's grip.

Alex watches him go and carries on fighting the panic that's rising up his throat, that's trying to choke him into submission. He presses his fingers to the pulse in Mike's wrist and knows instantly that it's too fast, too thready, like touching a tiny, frightened bird instead of a man. Alex does what he does in any awful situation: he talks to himself.

"It's okay, man. We're gonna get outta here in just a few minutes, you'll see. I was thinking, while you were gone. D'you remember when Stevie first partnered us up? People warned me you were weird, that you were too quiet and we wouldn't like each other. And then I met you and we just...you weren't weird at all, man! You were just like me. You looked at me like I was someone special, and you made me laugh so much. I fell in love with you in record time, I think. I'd look at you doing something totally normal like getting a coffee or leaning out of the car window to call to me and I'd think 'god, I want him. I want him _so badly_'. I'd've let you do anything to me. Is that weird? And then one day you just...you kissed me. And there's no turning back from that, dude. I'm head over heels in love with you. You've gotta fight this, okay?"

Mike doesn't wake, despite the death grip Alex has on his hand. And just as Alex resigns himself to settling back down to watch him closely, the door to the barn reopens. 

  
  
  
*****  
  


"Wake up!"

Alex winces as Mike gets slapped around the face for the third time, his head lolling as he tries to escape it. "He's trying, for fuck's sake!" he blurts out angrily. "You wanna hit me instead, you _dick_?"

The guy attempting to manhandle Mike's barely conscious body through the door of the barn looks up at him with an expression that's frighteningly cold and careless, and he holds Alex's eyes for a moment before slamming Mike's arm against the doorjamb. He waits for Mike to regain full consciousness before shifting the heavy door with the back of his boot and kicking it shut on Mike's wrist, the resulting crack of bone making Alex cry out in horror as Mike's knees just _buckle_, his eyes closed in agony.

"Hang him up," the woman orders from a chair nearby, unmoved by the whole thing. "Nice and tight."

Mike makes this quiet sound of denial that breaks Alex's heart as he's dragged over to the ropes that still hang from the rafters, desolation clear in his expression as he looks up at them swaying above his head, dark eyes so tired and so hopeless. 

Alex knows he’ll relive the sound Mike makes as they string him back up for months to come. Just the thought of the bones in his broken wrist pulling apart, _god_...the thought of the excruciating pain makes him want to retch. __

“You’re not gonna make it out of this one alive,” the man says, moving over to Alex to push him down into the chair recently vacated by the woman. There's a pair of handcuffs around each leg and he pulls Alex's arms around behind the chair-back, snapping the cuffs onto his wrists. “You’re the hacker, tough guy, so I guess it’s your turn now, huh? Think you can be as brave as your bodyguard, here? You know we drowned him, basically? And Ella over there shot him full of some of our purest MDMA and he took to it like a baby? We turn it into pills, sell it to college kids who wanna have the best sex of their lives, but the juice is the good shit. You know what it feels like to get fucked when you're tripping on that stuff? I was considering showing him, but seeing him puke all over his shirt kinda put me off my game.”

Alex's brain _shorts out_.

A low, buzzing hum sets up residence in his head as he stares blankly at the wall. His hands curl so hard into fists his knuckles crack.

"You wanna fuck someone?" he finds himself saying, the words pouring out of him without a second's thought. "I'm the one you want. I'm kind of a slut, y'know? Kinda easy. It's what I'm known for at the department."

He grits his teeth as a hand brushes the back of his neck, and, over in the corner of the room, Ella laughs. Alex keeps his eyes on the dirt and gravel floor. _Don't look up. Don't look at Mike's face._

"I thought as much," the guy says, the piece of shit. "He's your boyfriend, right? You look like you'd be the bottom."

"Oh, sure," Alex says with a smirk, that same stream of words he just can't put a lid on. _Won't_ put a lid on, if it means their attention's off Mike. "Why d'you think he'd partner with me otherwise? I'm not that good at my job! I'm not brave, I'm certainly not smart..."

“You’re real pretty, though,” the guy says, a smirk in every word. He pushes a hand into Alex's bleached hair and tugs, pulling his head back until he has to look up at Mike's face. Mike's staring at him, his usually impenetrable eyes glassy and wretched, fathomless with anguish. He gives the most minute shake of his head, pleading with Alex to stop. Alex's heart shreds into ribbons.

"Ella?" the guy calls to his partner, watching them in amusement. "Get me some more of your stuff. I wanna show that skinny Italian motherfucker how to show this one _real_ ecstasy."

He laughs at his own joke.

Alex swallows once, twice against the bile that threatens to rise up his throat.

  
  
  
*****  
  


The guy is in Alex's lap. The farmer/scientist hybrid weirdo is inches from his face, that hand still wound painfully tightly in his hair, a slightly mad glint in his eyes. And Alex is trying his best to fight the urge to buck him off, smiling even as pain shoots through his thighs and the cuffs dig hard into his wrists.

"So tell me more about this MDMA of yours," Alex says, jaw clenching as the guy starts eyeing up his throat like a hungry vampire. "What's it gonna do for me?"

"For you?" the guy says, delighted. "You're gonna enjoy every second of me fucking you, that's what. It'll feel like the biggest, hardest dick you've ever had; it'll feel like my hands are under your skin. And when it's over, and I slit your throat, even that'll feel amazing! That gush of bright red is gonna be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen."

"Really, wow. That sounds...just _so_ impressive," Alex says, attempting a derisive grin and only succeeding in getting a slap to the face that makes his head reel, stars flashing in front of his eyes. The mad look in the guy's eyes just morphs into something even more predatory.

"I'm not gonna go easy on you, hacker. It's gonna fucking hurt, and you're gonna love it."

"My last request before being horribly murdered was always gonna be some drug-addled sex, so you really read me well, pal."

The guy stands up, that perma-smirk on his face. "Your boyfriend there's not gonna enjoy it so much, I'm afraid," he says, and it's as he reaches for his belt and pulls out a big, fuck-off knife that his smirk is wiped clean from his face. 

Forever.

In his manic lust for what he's about to get, he fails to notice the silent, bare feet stepping up behind him. He fails to notice Mike standing there with the fury of hell blazing in his feverish eyes. He never even sees it coming, the strong, wiry arm that pulls back and jams a sharp, two-pronged hayfork so hard and with such precision through the back of his neck it emerges out the other side. He falls to his knees, eyes going wide as he realises, finally, that he's finished, his spinal cord severed. He breathes some grim, wet sounding breaths as he reaches up to feel the metal that's protruding from his throat.

What a tableaux they must make. 

Alex stares up at Mike, the dark avenging angel, his left arm hanging useless and the metal woven into his skin like he's some kind of bionic man, the fever-wild rage in his eyes the most captivating and beautiful thing Alex has ever seen. The guy falls forwards, finally, onto his face. Mike puts a foot on his back and wrenches the fork back out, a slight wiggle of the prongs making this sickening, squelching crunch. He stands there, swaying in nothing but his boxers, blood spattered across his skin, his good hand gripping the shaft of the dripping pitchfork as he looks towards the door.

"Mike..." Alex calls to him urgently. "Set me free, man. Let me help you, before she comes back, okay?"

Mike doesn't answer. He cocks his head, listening, and then his fingers go limp and the pitchfork falls slowly to the dirt floor.

"Mike?" Alex says frantically, tugging hopelessly at his cuffs. "_Mike_!"

Mike crumples to the ground.

And then Alex hears the second of two gunshots.

  
  
  
*****  
  


Eddie barges his way in through the closed barn door, his eyes and gun scanning from one side of the room to the other before he’s sending the ‘all-clear’ sign and then he and Kevin are both rushing forward, boots imprinting blood, knees coming down in it as they get down by Alex’s side. They spare the guy on the floor the briefest of checks before glancing at each other, a silent acknowledgement of _what the hell?_

"He's got the keys, I think," Alex tells them, his voice rough with panic as he gestures towards the body with his foot. "Guys, hurry up..."

Kevin finds them in a back pocket of the guy's jeans and he turns quickly to unlock Alex's cuffs, his eyes surveying the whole scene with concern.

“You okay?” he asks, hands coming up to turn Alex’s face towards him, watching the focus of his eyes carefully as Eddie presses his fingers to Mike’s throat. “Alex? Can you give us a sit rep, man?”

What Alex wants to do is bury his head against Kevin’s chest and cry. What he manages to say is: “Mike’s really hurt. I mean, really, _really_ -” 

“He’s breathing,” Eddie interjects, lowering his head to watch the rise and fall of Mike’s chest. “Holy shit,” he utters under his breath as he starts to become aware of the needles. "Oh, holy shit..."

“Yeah,” Kevin says softly, eyes still fixed on Alex. “Can you gimme a little more, man? Just the basics, okay?”

Alex blinks away the tears clouding his vision, trying to concentrate on Kevin’s familiar voice. “The needles, they’re in his back too, and his feet...he said they were old, he thought they might have something on them, and I think they waterboarded him, and they injected him with their own fucking MDMA. They broke his wrist just like, twenty minutes ago, and then they hung him up by it. God, they hung him by his _wrists_. He just…he got _free_ and he _saved_ me and I don't even know how he had the strength...”

Kevin keeps one hand on Alex’s face but runs the other through his messy bleached hair gently, fingers tucking it back behind his ear. “Saved you from what, man?” 

“The guy, that guy there, that piece of trash, the one Mike shish kabob'd, he wanted to shoot me up with their junk too and rape me."

Kevin retracts his hands immediately, eyes dark with realisation and insight, but Alex shoots out one of his own and grabs Kevin's wrist, shaking his head. "S'okay," he promises. "I'm okay."

“We need to get outta here, Kev,” Eddie says quietly, his voice barely controlled, his hands sliding underneath Mike’s back carefully. “There's bound to be reinforcements on the way.” 

“Yeah, we’re coming,” Kevin says, and he takes Alex’s hand from his wrist and presses it in-between his own. “Can you stand? Lean on me if you need to.” 

Alex goes with it as Kevin pulls him to his feet, his eyes on Eddie as he lifts Mike into his arms like he’s lifting a child. Mike makes this quiet groan of pain and Alex is _there_, reaching out to touch him. 

“Alex, you gotta let me get past, man,” Eddie says contritely, holding his eyes with a look so sympathetic it makes Alex want to drop and curl into the foetal position on the floor. “I'll give him back to you when we get to the van and you can hold him, but you’ve gotta let me get him outta here…”

“C’mon, man,” Kevin soothes, touching Alex’s forearm. “Eddie’s got him, now.”

Alex hesitates, brushing his thumb gently across the soft hairs along Mike's forearm, and then he moves, taking a step away. Kevin takes hold of his hand, squeezes it gently, and pulls him towards the door.

  
  
  
*****  
  


"What's it to be, man?" Kevin calls from the driver's seat, keeping his eyes on the road as they speed along a dark, deserted country road. "Closest hospital or home hospital?"

Kneeling on the floor in the back, Eddie finishes tearing open a packet of gauze with his teeth before answering: "Home, Kev. He's stable. He'll be better off there."

Alex sits at the head of the folded-out stretcher that runs along the side panel of the van and keeps a hand on Mike's forehead, brushing his fingers through sweat-damp black hair and watching Eddie as he works, an uncomfortably familiar sight.

"Morgan?" Kevin's voice comes again, talking to his hands-free phone this time. "Yeah, we've got 'em. Mike's injured, Alex is...Alex is okay. Two fatalities at the site. We didn't see any other signs of life. We're on our way home, we'll brief you fully when we get back."

  
  


Kevin was one of the first people Alex met when he started out, when Kevin was being trained up in armed response alongside his partner, Eddie. The pair of them were as tight as any of the rest of them. Eddie was kind of intimidating on first meeting, a little quiet and a little inclined to stare thoughtfully at you with piercing green eyes, a whole sleeve of colourful tattoos down his right arm and a bar through his septum. It took Alex about a week of hanging out with Kevin, and by default also Eddie, to realise he was just kind of reserved. And the first time they came along as back up on a mission, Alex saw the sweet, protective side to him, caring and surprisingly gentle. 

They were both gentle, actually. They were crackshots with any kind of firearm imaginable, and they’d both killed and been trained to do so with cold hearts and an impressive emotional detachment, but they were people Alex depended on, and loved.

  
  
  
*****  
  


Kevin sits with an arm around him, the simple gesture so supportive it makes Alex fight back tears every time he stops to think about it, whenever the entire-body numbness fades. He and Eddie have shed their flak jackets and caps and uniform as far as they can to get comfortable and they’re just Kevin and Eddie suddenly, the two guys Alex and Mike regularly goof around with in the canteen at work, the four of them laughing themselves silly at stupid o’clock in the morning, exhausted and high with relief to have made it through another day.

Eddie brings him a coffee, real stuff, not from a vending machine. He's friends with one of the admin staff behind the desk, too much of a regular at that particular trauma unit not to be. He crouches down to push a mug carefully into Alex's hands, holding it there until Alex's fingers start working again, looking up at him with those gentle, watchful eyes. Alex feels the heat of it against his palms and notes it absently, like his brain's disconnected itself from his limbs. He looks at Eddie, crouching there in his soft, red plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up over his tattoos, and he manages a crooked smile which Eddie returns ruefully. Instead of getting up he just sits down cross-legged on the floor and wraps a hand around Alex's calf, a protective touch that marries with Kevin's. 

Alex closes his eyes and focuses on the warmth of their hands and the heat of the mug against his fingers. As he zones out, he listens to the soft hush of their voices around him, the familiarity of it soothing just a little of the cold in his core.

“You speak to Rhett earlier?” Kevin asks, setting his mug of tea down on the seat next to him while it cools.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, his hand running slowly up and down Alex’s shin. “He passed the ‘fit to work’ tests, so I guess they’ll be back in the rota by Monday. Link’s been climbing the walls, annoying the hell out of Stevie.”

“Good thing too, after this,” Kevin remarks. “Mike’s gonna be off duty for a while. I don’t know what Stevie would’ve done with both teams out.”

“The top tier, you mean?”

“Right. The creme de la creme.” 

Eddie smiles and Kevin reaches down with his other arm to thread his fingers into Eddie’s long hair, playing with the dark blonde strands. Eddie leans his head against Alex’s knee and sighs. 

“You okay, man?” Kevin asks softly, tenderly. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, tilting his head a little more as Kevin’s fingers tuck his hair around his ear, a gentle, repetitive motion. “Just doesn’t get any easier, does it?” 

“Gets harder the longer we know them,” Kevin agrees plainly. 

“We’ve hauled so many of these guys out of so many shitholes, Rhett and Link being the worst culprits, of course. We've patched up so many wounds," Eddie says, shaking his head as he admits quietly: "Lost a few.”

“And the missions just get more dangerous, month to month, year to year. For us, too.” 

“James just told me this is the fourth time he’s seen us here in as many months. I hadn't realised.”

“Once with Rhett, once with Chase, now with Mike and Alex...who was the other one?”

“It was _you_, dumbass,” Eddie says, fondly amused. “You and your concussion, when you scared the shit out of me.”

“Oh yeah,” Kevin says in realisation, laughing as he adds: "Guess the after effects are still going on, huh?” 

"Nah, that's just you - thinking 'bout everyone but yourself," Eddie says, shooting him a warm smile.

Kevin smiles in return and for a moment they fall into silence, sitting there with Alex, watching the running of the hospital around them. Eventually, Kevin says quietly: "Mike really did a number on that guy, huh?"

Eddie raises his eyebrows in acknowledgement. "Pretty incredible, right?"

"I can't even imagine. He's gonna...I mean, the shrinks are gonna have their work cut out, I think."

"Getting him past it, y'mean?"

"Yeah. We've seen some pretty violent things, me and you, and you know what a mindfuck it is to kill someone with your bare hands."

Eddie tips his head to concede the point. “You know I talked to some guys from the Illinois branch last week? They said their armed response guys currently have an average life expectancy of thirty-three.”

Kevin’s hand stills in Eddie’s hair. “Oh shit,” he says, then his fingers start to move again, more slowly. “I’m thirty-three, dude…”

“And I’m thirty-four. We’re defying death, right now, man,” Eddie confirms. 

“Well..._shit_.”

Alex falls asleep at some point, lulled by their voices and the constant background sounds of the hospital. Exhaustion has settled bone-deep, every inch of him desperate for rest even though he's pretty sure he'll be having nightmares for the next month. When he wakes it's with the slow realisation sinking into his subconscious that the hands have gone from his shoulders and leg and sudden panic at being alone jolts him awake, a violent fear that he might have dreamt the last couple of hours, that he might be back in that dog cage, that he might be -

Kevin touches his arm immediately, still very much there by his side, his fingers curling around Alex's wrist to anchor him as he looks around wildly, just in time to see the back end of a doctor disappearing down the corridor.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Kevin soothes quietly, squeezing Alex's bicep. "We're still here."

“What happened?” Alex asks breathlessly, blinking under the lights. Eddie’s gone but Alex can still hear his voice somewhere nearby, talking to someone at the check-in desk again, or maybe Stevie on the phone.

“We can go in and see him in a few,” Kevin says, his smile relaxed and relieved as he squeezes Alex’s wrist gently. “He’s okay. The needles have been removed, the wounds flushed, his lungs checked, internal organs scanned, wrist reset and splinted. He’s on antibiotics and they’re monitoring for effects of water inhalation, but he’s gonna be okay, dude.”

Alex closes his eyes and _breathes_ as something begins to unwind in his gut. It's not the first time he's had to sit and wait in a hospital chair for Mike to be patched up, but this is the worst by far, the most frightening, the most devastating. He knows there's gonna be physical therapy and mental therapy and it's going to get _messy_, but...messy he can deal with. They've done messy before.

When he opens his eyes again, Kevin is watching him carefully. Alex blinks, surprised by the sudden scrutiny.

"If you ever wanna talk about what went down in there, lemme know, okay?" Kevin says, dark eyes astute. "Any time."

Alex holds his gaze for a long, long moment before nodding solemnly. He's got that choked feeling in his throat again and it makes him want to _run_.

Kevin keeps on looking at him, searching, then he nods too and looks away, finally, when Eddie reappears.

  
  
  
*****  
  


Mike hates hospitals. Has since he was a kid, hates everything about ‘em, the smells and the sounds, the people who want him to look them in the eyes as they poke and prod at his body like it’s normal. God, he hates it. 

At least he’s in a private room this time and not stuck in a ward with a dozen other people, listening to them cough and puke and moan. This time it’s just him doing the moaning, and the room’s pretty quiet aside from a clock on the wall that ticks his life away. It’s a quarter past one in the morning. His mouth is dry and his head fuzzy, but the agony in his wrist has been dulled to a welcome numbness. 

He has a clause in his file that he’s only allowed certain sedatives and local anaesthetics; it’s a common thing amongst all of the agents, a precaution against loose lips caused by opioids in particular. It’s not like they’re denied general anaesthetic in an emergency, but many a time Mike’s opted to have stitches without any local, just to save on paperwork. He’d had some local this time for the wrist. Watching the doctor shifting it around to realign the bones had been a weird experience, his brain still expecting that spine-melting pain he’d felt earlier.

Turned out the needles weren’t laced with anything other than a concentrated bleach solution, enough to burn like hell but ironically probably enough to sterilise them pretty well. Eddie had already warned him even so that they’d need to do a blood test for HIV when they got back, his words soft but the meaning making Mike’s stomach twist in knots. 

Sitting on the edge of his hospital bed, wearing a pair of Kevin’s jeans and one of Eddie’s worn, plaid shirts, both pulled from their emergency stash of spare clothes in the van, he waits for the quiet knock on the door he knows is coming. 

Alex. 

Just thinking of Alex eases some of the tension in his shoulders. Alex, friends with everyone and the light of Mike’s life, honestly.

Alex's words from earlier keep running through his head. _'Why'd you think he'd partner with me, otherwise? I'm not that good at my job!'_. It was a tactical piece of bullshit and Mike knows that, but it still hurts to think it's even in Alex's head somewhere.

Most hackers don’t make it past a couple of years of the kind of strain they deal with, day to day. It takes a certain kind of ability to detach - which Alex and Link both apparently have, considering the fact that Mike and Rhett are the two agents with the longest-standing partnerships in the business.

Alex’s body isn’t like Mike’s, or Rhett’s. His skin isn’t a backdrop for scars, although he has his fair share. That’s not to say he doesn’t suffer, though. Mike knows intimately how Alex suffers, because he sees it day to day. Heart palpitations, migraines, insomnia, stress, panic attacks, loss of appetite, nightmares...the list goes on. 

He’s seen Alex infiltrate a company in days, making it into the IT department before charming his way into getting the receptionist to get him a coffee while he sits at his or her computer and pulls off the details of every employee and every weakness in the system. He’s so good at making people feel at ease, no one ever sees it coming. He makes his way into people’s facebook accounts, connecting with their families, gathering information that can be used for ransom purposes. He causes glitches in the system that just mean they give him even more access in order to fix it. He destroys lives and he does it with a smile, and then he comes home and he deals with it. Alex and Link don’t deal with nameless, faceless ‘bad guys’. They get to know fathers and mothers, wives and husbands, people with children. People who’re expecting to go and watch little Bobby play softball at the weekend.

The hackers are the lifeblood of their whole operation. Hackers come first, always, and when they're as insanely special and talented as Alex and Link then being their respective field agent is hugely, vitally important. Mike knows Rhett feels it too, that sense of looking after something so precious. And falling in love with them hasn't complicated things, it's just made them _more_ precious. Mike and Rhett are the most protective, determined, switched on agents in the department. They have to be.

Alex is everything that's good in Mike's life. He's sweet and open and clever and coy, and although he flirts with everyone and makes friends like it’s nothing, he only truly bonds with a minority. Mike, Link, Rhett.

Alex has always looked at him like he’s something special, and he always kisses like it’s the first time, a soft reverence behind his touch and his gaze that always has Mike craving more. 

Alex. The most sensual, tactile, charismatic person Mike's ever met.

  
  
  
*****  
  


The door opens at twenty-past one.

Alex looks about as stressed and worried as Mike feels, his hair a tousled mess from running his hands through it, his eyes dark and tired. He smiles though, of course he does, and Mike can’t do anything but smile back at him, affection and relief at being with him again bursting his chest wide open. 

Alex doesn’t speak, just walks right up to him and in between Mike’s knees and hugs him fiercely, his forehead coming down on Mike’s shoulder like he’s trying to bury himself in Mike’s body. 

Mike holds him tightly; they both smell like blood and fear-sweat and it makes his heart race a little, memories threatening to overtake him, but then Alex pulls back enough to look at him with big, beautiful hazel eyes and he takes Mike’s face in his hands, gazing at him as though checking every inch of his face for trouble. 

“Kevin says you can come home,” he says, finally, his voice a little raw and rusty. 

Mike nods. “I think so. Are you okay?”

Alex looks downwards, his hands sliding down to press against Mike’s chest. “I’m fine, dude. I'm okay."

"Honestly?"

"Yeah, I'm just...I’m sorry for some of the things I had to say back there…Sorry you had to hear 'em.”

“You did what you had to do,” Mike says firmly, reaching out to put a hand under Alex’s chin to tilt his head back up, shaking his own as their eyes meet. “You bought us time. I don’t know that I could’ve done what you did, man. You were _amazing_.”

Alex swallows, his eyes filling. “I don’t feel good about it, Mike.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I’m _so_ sorry you had to put yourself on the line like that.” Mike strokes Alex’s jaw gently, hoping Alex can see the emotional availability in his eyes that he never gives to anyone else; never even feels with anyone else. “I was so scared for you."

"I was petrified! I thought they were gonna kill you in front of me. I couldn't _deal_ with that, man, it'd be the end of me, y'know?"

"Don't say that, brother."

"I mean it," Alex stresses. "I can't do this without you. How did you even get _free_ back there, Mike?"

"I clenched my fists as he tied the knots so they weren't quite as tight as he thought," Mike explains, looking down at his cast. "Hurt like hell, but my wrist was newly flexible enough to slip one hand out. I thought I was gonna pass out, but there was no way I was leaving you with that guy. No fucking way."

Alex looks at him in wonder, shaking his head as he leans his face into Mike's hand. He closes his eyes, sorrow creasing his brow with a rueful frown.

Mike gazes up at him, the man he lives with, works with, dreams about, feels _so much_ for it physically hurts him sometimes, like his chest's pulling itself apart.

"I love you," he says quietly, and god, he means it so much. He's said it a hundred times before but right at this moment he feels like he's never needed so badly to say it out loud. "I love you _so much_, Alex.”

Alex's frown deepens, his long eyelashes a little wet with tears. “I love you too,” he whispers, leaning in again to press their temples together, one hand winding into Mike’s hair and the other curling around his neck. “Don’t leave me, Mikey.”

Mike slides his arms around Alex’s waist, clinging onto him like a lifeline, the fingers of his good hand pressing into the knots of Alex’s spine through his shirt. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn't,” he says softly. “You’re everything to me.”

Alex presses himself even closer into Mike’s space, his body trembling with barely contained emotion, his lips brushing against Mike's forehead.

"You ready to go home, man?" Mike whispers. He thinks of their apartment back at the office, of their shower and their bed, of their friends and their lives together.

He thinks how it'll feel to be safe again, even just 'til their next mission.

He thinks of an hour or so from now, laying next to Alex and letting Alex kiss him senseless.

  
  
  



End file.
